Time Warner’s iconic New York 1 cable news channel will be changing its name — in a bid to keep viewers from migrating to competitors in the New York City market.
The name change, which met with strong reaction yesterday, is expected to occur in the fall — likely in November or December, says Steve Paulus, NY1’s VP of news and local programming.
“Some people go to Verizon [FiOS] and the first thing they find out is that they don’t have NY1 — so maybe now they’ll think twice about going to Verizon,” Paulus told The Post.
“We’re trying to build a news brand and this is just the beginning of the process,” he said. “We have a firm commitment to local news . . . and when viewers turn us on [after the re-branding] they’re going to see the same shows — ‘Inside City Hall,’ ‘In the Papers,’ ‘Capital Tonight.’
“It will all be the exact same thing with new graphics, new animation and new branding.”
Paulus says there’s been no decision made, yet, on the channel’s new name.
“It could be TWC News, but I don’t know exactly where we’ll end up,” he said. “I think NY1 is going to be in there somewhere. We’re trying to figure it out.”
Paulus says the name change to NY1, which launched in 1992, is part of a massive re-branding overhaul to Time Warner’s entire cable news operation — which also encompasses Your News Now (YNN) upstate and in Austin, Texas and four hyper-local Time Warner news channels in North Carolina.
NY1’s star anchor and “In the Papers” host Pat Kiernan addressed the change on the air yesterday. “Let me say one thing on this,” he said. “I want to make it clear that this is a branding decision and not a content decision.
“We’ll still be here every morning and the content will be the same — the logo is less important than the content.”
“People feel strongly about NY1 and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Paulus said. “There’s a lot of hysteria and the tweets are going crazy. When you mess with their channel, people are gonna get upset. We’ve got to prove we’re not going to mess with it.”